1 Martin Foys UW-Madison [email protected] Revised draft for: Transitional States: Cultural Change, Tradition and Memory in Medieval England (ACMRS 2016) Pre-publication draft The Undoing of Exeter Book Riddle 47: ‘Bookmoth’1 I. Doing the Riddle: Creation Exeter Book Riddle 47 (hereafter, Riddle 47, or "BookMoth" riddle) reMains one of the literary stars of the Manuscript’s riddle collection – often anthologized and regularly discussed, despite the curious fact that in conventional terMs, it has never been regarded as that iMpressive a riddle:2 Moððe word fræt. Me þat þuhte wrætlicu wyrd, þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn, þæt se wyrM forswealg wera gied suMes, þeof in þystro, þryMfæstne cwide ond þæs strangan staþol. Stælgiest ne wæs wihte þy gleawra, þe he þaM wordum swealg. A Moth ate words. I thought that a marvelous occurrence, when I learned of this wonder – that the worM devoured the sayings of one Man, - this thief in the dark – the glorious speech, and its strong foundation. The thievish-guest was not a whit wiser – he who devoured those words!3 1 This essay was originally composed to be part of a festschrift in honor of Allen Frantzen. But in light of public statements made by Frantzen regarding women, feminism and the academy (see Rio Fernandes, "Prominent Medieval Scholar’s Blog on ‘Feminist Fog’ Sparks an Uproar," in The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 2016 <http://chronicle.com/article/Prominent-Medieval-Scholar-s/235014>), I can no longer offer this essay in that context. Because an academic publication is a durable record, this essay remains in this volume to provide an explicit citation of Frantzen's views and the controversy that surrounds them, so that their witness and an objection to them is registered within it. As my dissertation director, Frantzen most vitally taught me not to back down in the face of a position you feel strongly is wrong, but rather to actively counter it with your own. Accordingly, though it would have been easier to simply retract the essay from this volume, or silently remove my original, honorific footnote, this essay remains, to note my debt to Frantzen for what he has contributed to the field of Anglo-Saxon studies and my own professional development, and equally to object to the positions he has taken that I cannot agree with, and which have blemished the field of Anglo-Saxon studies. Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg. 2 This essay follows the conventional numbering of the Exeter Book riddles as found in George Phillip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, ed. The Exeter Book (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 180-210 and 229-43. Craig Williamson, The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1977) provides an alternative numeration of the riddles. The texts of all Exeter Book riddles cited in this essay are taken from Krapp and Dobbie, except as noted. 3 Except where noted, all translations of Old English and Latin are my own. 2 Most critics accept, to varying degrees, that the solution of the riddle is some version of a bookworM – a page-eating insect we today would recognize as a larval forM of the death watch beetle (Xestobium rufovillosum), or of the coMMon furniture beetle (Anobium punctatum), or Maybe as the so-called booklouse (Trogium pulsatorium).4 The first line of the poeM Makes it clear that its subject is a bug that eats words, and for Modern scholars it does not take a huge leap of iMagination to infer that the words eaten and swallowed represent physical daMage to a Manuscript. While actual moths as we usually think of them today, fully mature and fluttering about, are not that interested in books (though they can have a fondness for clothing and even cloth book bindings),5 the Old English moððe applies equally to the winged insect or its larval, wyrm-like forM.6 The standard solution to the Old English riddle has further and unaMbiguous support in the fact that the text is a reworking of a late-Classical Latin riddle by SyMphosius, one often accoMpanied by the title which provides its solution: Tinea ("moth/worM"): Littera Me pavit nec quid sit littera novi: In libris vixi nec suM studiosior inde; Exedi Musas nec adhuc taMen ipsa profeci.7 Letters have nourished Me, but I know not what letters are. I have lived in books, but am no More studious thereby. I have devoured the Muses, and yet so far have not Myself Made progress. The Exeter Book version substantially expands and Modifies its Latin source, descriptively and figuratively augMenting a core figure of something that is nourished by letters and books, but reMains ignorant of their Meaning. SyMphosius’s riddle employs the coMMon rhetorical structure of first-person prosopopoeia, allowing the insect to describe its own condition as a creature unable to benefit froM letters, books and the Muses. The Old English version recasts this figure as a third-person report that first announces its subject (moððe), before specifying the Moth’s form (wyrm), and then describing this creature as a thief (þeof, stælgiest) who reMains ignorant (in þystro, ne wæs wihte þy gleawra) despite its consuMption of words. The Old English riddle also obscures and abstracts the Material object that the insect feeds upon. In the Latin, the litterae (letters) MetonyMically introduce libris (books); in the Old English the words eaten do not explicitly describe books, but rather the song or speech of a certain Man (wera gied sumes), appositionally described in the next two lines as glorious and a strong foundation (þrymfæstne cwide ond þæs strangan staþol). The phrase strangan staþol artfully suggests a range of Meanings, from the Material book that contains these sayings to the cultural iMport of gnoMic expression. Finally, the Old English text adds an additional narrative layer of the first-person observer who siMultaneously describes the riddle’s subject, and his own course of learning and reflection on it (ic . gefrægn, me 4 John V. Richardson. 2010 [1987] "Bookworms: The Most Common Insect Pests of Paper in Archives, Libraries, and Museums." Last modified December 15. 5 Richardson, "Bookworms." 6 J. Bosworth, and T. N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of the late Joseph Bosworth, ed. and Enlarged T. Northcote Toller (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1898, 1921), 699. Accessed through the Digital Edition of the Bosworth- Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. 2010. http:// http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/. 7 Symphosius, "Tinea," ed. Raymond Theodore Ohl, The Enigmas of Symphosius (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928), 48. 3 þuhte), situating the wyrm’s activity within an aura of wonderMent (wrætlicu wyrd, wundor). The widely espoused belief that the poeM announces, or even gives away, its answer at the start historically has Made for some critical uneasiness. Frederick Tupper noted long ago that "the answer is betrayed at the outset," and Krapp and Dobbie echo Christian Grein’s earlier assertion that the riddle’s so-called solution ("die BucherMotte") is "obvious"; WilliaMson pronounces the riddle’s opening to be "shocking," while both Ann HarleMan Stewart and Andy Orchard note that the riddle "gives the solution away," an assertion repeated (with qualifications) by Dieter Bitterli.8 To explain this apparent lack of an interpretative challenge, Fred Robinson and Bruce Mitchell consider the poeM in a forMalist Mode as less a riddle and More an artful exercise in rhetorical paradox; Geoffrey RussoM develops the notion of paradox as the idea that the insect is eating spoken, not written words, while Stewart interprets the riddle as a "stylistic parody" of the "Old English heroic Mode."9 Most recently, Patrick Murphy reinforces the traditional interpretation of the poem even as he calls to move beyond it, equivocating that "it seeMs less important to naMe Riddle 47’s obvious answer than to appreciate its playful sense of wonder at the Marvelous qualities of the written word."10 Is this just a bad riddle? Archer Taylor’s definition of riddles as, "descriptions of objects in terMs intended to suggest soMething entirely different" suggests so, or that we need to a different solution.11 I have always wondered if this riddle is better than we give it credit for, and if the ease with which Modern readers arrive at an apparent answer deceives theM. Good riddles, as typified by other riddles in the Exeter Book and other collections of early Medieval Aenigmata, siMply do not give their answers away. Regardless of whether they caMe with solutions or not, the texts of early Medieval riddles habitually disguise their answers in figural substitutes whose qualities only obtusely overlap with their ultiMate referent.12 The Exeter Book riddles, like their Latin sources and analogues, encourage and even celebrate the discovery of the hidden "key" that solves the riddle. Many of the riddles fraMe this iMpulse in the forMulaic deMand saga hwæt ic hatte ("Say what I am called"), while riddles such as Exeter Book 42 produce More elaborate challenges: Hwylc þæs hordgates cægan cræfte þa claMMe onleac þe þa rædellan wið ryneMenn hygefæste heold heortan bewrigene 8 Frederick Tupper, Jr., ed. The Riddles of the Exeter Book (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1910), xl; Krapp and Dobbie, Exeter Book, 347, citing Christian W.M. Grien, Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Poesie (Göttingen: G.H. Wigand, 1858), vol. II, 410. Williamson, Old English Riddles, 285; Ann Harleman Stewart, "Old English Riddle 47 as Stylistic Parody," Papers on Language and Literature 11 (1975): 235; Andy Orchard, "Enigma Variations: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Tradition,’ Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, eds.